Monday, 7 March 2022

Hammering the Amazon

Real world satellite observation data obtained over the last 30 years, reveals that the Amazon rainforest is rapidly approaching a tipping point (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/07/climate-crisis-amazon-rainforest-tipping-point). A tipping point is reached when it becomes next to impossible to reverse a change. The data confirms that 75% of the untouched forest has lost its stability since the early 2000's. It now takes longer, after droughts and wildfires, for the forest to recover. Droughts and wildfires are now more frequent as well as being more intense. Loss of the Amazon rainforest would, of course, have profound implications for both the global climate and the planet's biodiversity. The existence of this tipping point (there are others e.g. the Antarctic melt), strongly suggests that we have less time to take remedial action than has been generally assumed.

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